


Tales from the Bus: Season 2

by ferggirl



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 17:35:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3298433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferggirl/pseuds/ferggirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A place for my drabbles, starting from the beginning of season 2. Will have multiple pairings, some with no pairings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma's back, but the sun is not.

He doesn’t know what he expected. 

He’d only known her for a few short weeks when he handed her that knife in the crumbling Hub, when they stood shoulder to shoulder in front of Victoria Hand and her brave nod told him she was ready to die as long as they went out fighting. 

Everything after that was a breathless blur. A scramble to stay alive. One minute she was standing next to them on the Bus, the next captured by Ward himself.

He’d been sure, when he heard who had taken her and Fitz, that he’d never see them again. HYDRA wasn’t kind to prisoners. At least that’s what his grandfather had told him. 

He has never been more relieved to be wrong. 

It was hard for Jemma, he could tell, once Fitz woke up. Before that, she had hope, and could pour herself into every effort to make her friend well. 

But when his eyes opened, her hope died.

For a while, Trip had thought her heart had died with it. She stopped smiling. Stopped hanging around with everyone else. Avoided meals, Fitz, Skye, even him. 

And then one morning she just wasn’t there.

Everyone else was hurting, so he did what he could to make them smile. But sometimes, he wondered how that woman, the one who could stand next to him and decide to go out fighting, could possibly run away from this fight. 

The world felt greyer, off-balance, knowing that Jemma Simmons had just walked away. 

When he heard May’s voice over the comms during the Morocco mission, it all snapped into place.

When they extracted her a few weeks later, she ran like a trained specialist, ducking at the right times when the gunfire sprayed overhead. 

He didn’t know what he had expected. But it wasn’t this woman with the hard eyes who steadily took down two agents in pursuit. 

It wasn’t the woman who stayed in Coulson’s office for an hour yelling about how they should never have blown her cover.

Jemma Simmons had returned, but the sun had stayed away. 

As he sank down onto the couch next to her and her stiff shoulders and her stack of debriefing papers, Trip mourned that loss. And then he smiled. 

He could bring his own sunshine. 

She was home. That was a damn fine place to start. 


	2. Here, kitty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma suggests getting a cat.

"Maybe we should get him a cat." 

Jemma blinks and refocuses on Skye’s troubled face. ”I’m sorry, come again?” 

Skye’s fingers are flying on her keyboard now, and photos of orange jumpsuits and kitty towers pop onto the big screen in the lab. 

"A cat. There’s this pilot program - maximum security prison in like… Pennsylvania or something," Skye says. "They give their tough prisoners cats."

"Skye," Jemma hesitates. "You know the big brother thing was an act. I know you do. Ward’s not some down on his luck thug with a heart of gold who just needs something of his own."

"I know. I just thought…"

"And the energy wall would probably drive the poor feline mad even if Ward kept it alive."

Her friend sighs, and the screen blacks out. “I know.”

"Besides, he’s probably allergic."

They keep working, the silence a bit more strained. 

******

Jemma goes to Coulson that night.

Three days later, she’s pacing the lab nervously when Skye comes skidding in with a huge smile on her face. 

"You  _got me a cat_.”

"I thought maybe you deserved one a bit more than our resident murdering psychopath," Jemma stammers. "I know I should have let you participate in the choosing, but-"

Skye throws her arms around her, and Jemma relaxes into the hug.

"He’s perfect. I’m gonna train him to hiss anytime I say ‘Grant Ward’ or ‘HYDRA’ and he’s going to sleep in Fitz’s sock drawer, and no murderers are allowed anywhere near him."

They spend the morning watching Fitz try to assemble the “10-minute kitty tower” Jemma had picked up when they touched down outside LA yesterday. The grey cat curls up in Skye’s lap while Fitz curses in Gaelic and decides he’s going to build all cat furniture from scratch starting now.

They name him Barney.

When Skye goes down to interrogate Ward that afternoon, Jemma slips into the control room to watch. Ward can’t seem to get under her skin today, all his veiled threats and barbed promises just bounce off Skye’s pointed indifference. 

Coulson nods his approval. “You were right, Simmons. The cat was a good idea.”

"Thank you, sir." She smiles. "The studies really were clear on the morale effect, even if they were focused on the prisoners and not the guards."

He squints at another camera as Skye hits the soundproof button on the barrier and turns to bound back up the stairs. “Why is Fitz ripping up carpet in the den?”

"Ah - right. He was threatening - that is, we had a bit of a snag with the kitty tower and, he, er…"

The director shoots her an unamused look that still somehow feels as though he’s laughing. 

"Deal with it."

"On it, sir. Right away."


	3. New Year's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU: Non-hydra Ward and Simmons out on assignment in NYC on New Year's Eve.

Jemma feels the cold iron of the fire escape through her wool tights as she sits there on the edge, contemplating the terrible choices that have led her to this moment. 

"I think I’ll just rest here, thanks. New year, new home on a fire escape."

Joining SHIELD, quite a large mistake, clearly. Betting Skye that Fitz would beat Trip back from their respective visits home for the holidays, a terrible idea. Losing is what landed her this New Year’s Eve assignment. 

Ward is squinting up at her, his feet safely on the ground. She can hear the roar of the Times Square crowd a block away. It must be nearly midnight.

"Simmons," his mouth twitches and she glowers. If he’s laughing at her… "You know I’ll catch you."

There’s an explosion of noise and light that arcs into the cold, cloudy night sky above the city that never sleeps. The wind picks up and mixed into the fluffy snowflakes that are sticking in his hair is… little colored bits of paper.

She can’t stop the smile at the absurd sight. Grant Ward, top grade SHIELD specialist, standing in a street in New York City with confetti in his hair, like her very own Romeo. Or Rapunzel’s prince. Or Tony from West Side Story, who was just another version of Romeo…

"And I’ve lost you." His deep voice has a laugh hidden behind the exasperation. "Come on, Jemma. Jump."

"Oh yes." Her sigh is deep and annoyed, and he does laugh, finally. "As though it is just that simple."

She puts a tentative foot on the fire escape ladder and shuts her eyes as it slides down to full extension. He’s only four feet below her now. She knows the physics of it all. She’ll survive. 

Her heart still stops as she steps out into empty space.

Then his arms wrap her up and she’s flush against his chest and breathing is hard for a different reason. 

"You ok?" He’s smiling, and it’s snowing and the white noise of the crowds makes this quiet alley feel very private.

They’ve been dancing around each other long enough that she’s surprised he doesn’t drop her to the pavement. Another piece of paper fluttters down and lands on his head. She lifts a hand to brush it aside, and the motion brings her even closer to him. 

"Sorry," she breathes. "Just a bit - you had a bit of…"

"Oh, fuck it," he mutters. Then his lips find hers and she lets her hand sink into his damp hair and if there is confetti stuck to her fingers she doesn’t notice until much, much later. 


	4. Smile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If I ever see you again, I'll kill you."

Her smile is probably the kind that poets describe as sunshine on a cloudy day.

She has turned that smile on him, before. When his mission was to know them, to blend in and make them weak. It had been too close, it had made him weak, too. 

So he hit the button to send her and her smile and her best friend to the bottom of the ocean. 

He had learned long ago that weakness meant death.

His brother, so strong and unassailable for so long, finally showed his weakness. Grant left him with their parents, to burn away the past he chokes on at night.

The missions may overlap in his head, the layers of deceit and abuse and willful disregard for “right” and “good” get all mixed up when he’s looking for his next cover story, when he’s weighing his survival against the truth.

But sometimes, he remembers that smile and curls inside the blackened husk he calls a soul and shuts out the noise, just for a moment. 

It’s odd and a little comforting, the cold, analytical part of his mind registers dully, that it’s that smile that’s about to kill him.

She’s standing there, two bloody hands steady on the gun like May and Skye and probably Bobbi have shown her. He’s not sure which of her three teammates, bleeding and disabled in the next room, have left her stained red. She’s not even supposed to be at this station.

She’s an easy mark, physically weak, an overthinker. He should have disarmed her by now, left her broken and discarded in his wake.

But she’s smiling. 

Big and wide and bright as the sun. She looks so fiercely happy to see him through the sight on the pistol. He’s caught, unable or unwilling to hurt her and run, to leave that safe place where he hides in the memory of her glow. 

"I always wondered," he says slowly, searching for the words - for the truth he has kept so hidden for so long, "what it would feel like to care."

She keeps smiling as she pulls the trigger. As the world goes dark around him, she leans down and whispers into his ear, “I made you a promise, Grant Ward. Thank you for giving me the chance to keep it.”

If her smile slips as she walks away, he is too far gone to see it. 


	5. Captain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Jemma / Steve Rogers, introductions.

Her mirror is mocking her. 

"Fitz, this is… Steve."

She tries it with a straight face and she’s almost certain her reflection rolls its eyes independently. 

"Fitz, you know how I had an assignment in New York last year?"

No, don’t remind him of how long it’s been. That’s not the way. Not after it took two years just to repair their friendship. 

"Funny thing is I only just found out myself," she lies to her own face. It’s not particularly believable. 

A strong arm wraps around her waist and tugs her to the left, out of view of her unhelpful reflection and onto the bed.

"Ms. Simmons," he says seriously. 

Her “Captain Rogers?” has more than a hint of exasperation. 

"You’re worrying." His eyes soften as he says it and she catches her breath because it’s still such a surprise that he cares - about her - so much. 

"It’s a delicate situation," she says. "Fitz is not the easiest of people and I told you about the plane and the coma."

He smiles and she takes a deep breath. “You told me. You also told me he’s your best friend. So it’s going to be fine.”

"Well we’re meeting him in half an hour and you’re still half naked," she grumbles, soothed despite herself. 

He wiggles his eyebrows. “Sometimes that’s a good icebreaker with people. Worked with you.”

Her cheeks heat and she pushes up and off of him. “That was - that was highly embarrassing and completely accidental and I apologized multiple times.” 

She feels his lips brush her forehead and watches him cross the room in search of a shirt. 

"Look," he says with a sly grin as he tugs a white t-shirt over his head. "If it all goes horribly wrong, I’ll promise to introduce him to Stark."

Jemma considers it - actually considers bribing her best friend with meeting one of his heroes to get him to forgive her for not telling that she’s been dating Captain America for six months. 

"It might work," she says. "But only as a last resort."

He tugs her up and brushes some hair out of her face. “Stop worrying. Nat likes you. Can’t be a worse introduction than that one.”

She leans into him, and their lips meet for a soft moment. Then she spins for the door. “Why do you think you haven’t met Fitz yet?”


End file.
